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Right now, there was no reason not to tell it to her straight. Sugaru looked back at her blankly. This wasn’t exactly the response she was expecting.

Rare wondered what she had to do to add a friend. Normally, just asking “Do you want to be friends?” would work. However, what mattered here was how the game defined “friends.”

How exactly did one become friends with someone else?

The sinister darkness that plagued modern society gushed forth from within, and that commonly accepted method of making friends in real life paralyzed her body for a brief moment.

If the system operated in largely the same way, then similar actions should lead to similar results. First was to try what two players would do when they wanted to friend each other.

Unfortunately, Rare never wanted to friend anyone during the closed beta. All the account data would be wiped at the end of the test, after all, and she just had too much fun exploring all the game systems, which wasn’t what most players wanted to do. In this open beta as well, she didn’t have any players she wanted to friend.

Rare had to rely on the Help documentation again.

“‘How to friend players’… should work. And search.”

Managing your friend list:

In order to add someone to your friend list, you need a friend card. Friend cards are created whenever you retrieve them from your inventory. You will always have access to your own friend card; what you take out from your inventory is always a copy. Give your friend card to another player and have them store it in their inventory to become friends. If you would like to remove a friend, take their friend card and destroy it or throw it away. Removed friends can be friended again by repeating the same steps again.

“Oh, I see…”

It was a simple system, basically like exchanging business cards. Rare checked her own inventory and found the “Friend Card” section. You could see the all contents of your inventory via the menu, but to take something out without using the system you had to focus on the specific item. NPCs wouldn’t be able to understand the concept of friend cards, so friending could only be initiated by players.

Rare gave the friend card she retrieved to Sugaru and told her to store it in her inventory.

<<You have become friends with [Sugaru].>>

And just like that, they were friends.

“Now, how do I access friend chat again… or well, I’ve never done it before. Ah, here we go.”

<Sugaru, can you hear me?>

Sugaru jumped in surprise.

<You should also be able to communicate with me in the same way; can you try it? Think of my name in your head, then feel your thoughts being directed to me.>

<……Boss boss boss boss… Ah, was that successful? Are we connected?>

<Ohh, you did it! Now, no matter how far apart we are, we can still talk. We don’t need to speak aloud, either, so it’s perfect for discussing topics in secret.>

The catkin girls still spoke to her rather casually, but Sugaru was a bit more formal. Or rather, Sugaru wasn’t actually using formal speech, but her thoughts were being translated into this form of speech to Rare. Friend chat was logged and stored temporarily, so that was probably why it automatically got translated into human speech.

Now that she knew friend chat could be used, the number of hands she could play would increase rapidly.

And now, after having investigated the followers she’d obtained so far, Rare found herself arriving at a single startling conclusion:

If NPCs could use the system the same way that players could, and if the system didn’t distinguish between players and NPCs as far as gameplay went, then there was nothing preventing players from being tamed.

If this were actually true, then she could siphon all the XP that other players had gathered for herself. Kind of like how some female characters get worshiped by male players, carried through content, and given free stuff.^[1] Since your avatar moved based on your actual body, and you used your own voice to speak, it was relatively hard to fake your sex in this game just like in other VR games, but it wasn’t impossible. Therefore, so-called “nekama”^[2] did exist out there. And if her thinking was correct, even XP could be donated in this game.

It was possible that this darkness that has existed throughout the history of online gaming was crystallizing into a more perfect form here.

That said, in terms of what could be done in the game, it was really hard to imagine a system that breached a user’s consent. If a player really did get tamed, the system would probably throw some kind of warning or system error message and allow them to void the effect. That would be a big difference compared to NPCs. That line from the tutorial, “the only difference between PCs and NPCs is whether or not they can receive system messages,” might refer to this.

Rare itched to go try it out. However, if she were to test it at this point in time, the existence of [Subordinate] would definitely become public. In which case, she could only test it on an exceptionally trustworthy player. Furthermore, that player would have to consent to possibly being tamed by Rare. As could be expected, Rare didn’t have any such confidante.

Or more like, she didn’t really know anyone period.

Now that she thought of it, she hadn’t seen any other players yet, but she wondered how many started in monster territory. And if those players were far outnumbered by the total possible spawn points in monster territory, then it could be effectively impossible to find anyone to cooperate with or friend. There was a really high chance that a given person in the game world could never meet any other player. What would you do if you wanted to play with your friends?

Regardless, Rare didn’t really want to play with friends anyway, so she didn’t care either way. If there was any content she’d have a hard time beating solo, she could just have Kerry and the other girls come along. If necessary, she could raise their INT even more, then they would probably be better than a random shitty player anyway. What a wonderful system she’d stumbled upon. She had nothing but gratitude for the developers who came up with it.

Once the girls woke up, she’d have them work on their manners. After they had more XP to spare, she also wanted to raise their INT and aim for them to be “The Actually Capable Elite Four,” a specific qualification that doesn’t come up in stories very often.

For the right now, they would wait for all the ants to recover, suppress the surrounding forest, and save up XP. Once Sugaru’s LP and MP recovered and she could produce more ants, their saved XP would be spent on acquiring more Enhance Follower skills for both Rare and Sugaru.

But first, let’s focus on conquering the entire forest.

^[1]: The literal term is “hime-play,” which specifically means “when players treat a female character like a princess, pampering them, giving them items, and protecting them from harm.” There’s a definition that someone posted on Nico Nico.

^[2]: “Nekama” originates from “net okama,” where “okama” is slang for “homosexual men.” However, nekama are not strictly homosexual; the term refers specifically to the behavior of a man who pretends to be a woman online. There is no inherent motive ascribed to the term “nekama.”